Prologue
There was a very brief time when I believed in a god. Life had been so hard that, childish as I was, I truly thought that if I prayed, someone out there would hear me.
"Damn it, how the hell did you find this place?! Crazy nun—!"
"Doesn't matter if she handles the Weapons of the Outer Gods—that bitch is still human! Stab her and she bleeds; take her head and she dies, same as anyone! Find her and rush her all at once!"
But nothing of the sort ever happened. I hadn't believed in any god, and I hadn't asked for some grand miracle. Even so, He would not grant me the smallest scrap of luck—as if that so-called divine grace simply could not reach me.
I sank into the cold, dark curtain of midnight and popped the magazine from a thing that had no business existing in this world, checking what remained. Two rounds left in it. One in the chamber. Four sets of footsteps, creeping toward me as quietly as they could. Even at one bullet a man, they outnumbered my rounds by one. Bad luck. The same as it had always been, in a previous life spent cursing God from beginning to end.
Yeah. It had always been like that. Mocking myself in silence, I waited calmly in the dark beneath the shadow for the footsteps to draw near. The ruckus I'd already raised must have given them some idea of where I was; the sound of them tearing through the warehouse, searching every corner, crept steadily closer.
Still, unless someone had unusually sharp eyes, they'd have trouble finding me. I was wearing clothes made to melt into the dark—a habit the Church had commissioned specially, so it wouldn't hinder movement. A black full-body stocking that clung to every inch of me, and, to cover what little modesty remained, nothing more than a length of cloth hung from the shoulders and the waist. Just another thing to make me hate God more.
I had cursed Him right up to the moment I killed myself, and He had answered by not only making me a woman, but stuffing me into a nun's body on top of it.
"She's ri—"
The moment I'd been waiting for. I put one round dead-center through the forehead of the man who had walked right up to me and started to shout. From the way his sword rose the instant he saw me, he was, in his own fashion, a highly trained knight. That did not mean he could take a bullet to the head and live.
The gunshot, of course, crashed through the warehouse, and at the sound heavy footfalls converged on me from every side. They didn't even know what the weapon was called. Did they at least recognize it as a Weapon of the Outer Gods? They came on without taking their eyes off the muzzle in my hand. Fine. However they twisted out of my aim, a turn of the wrist was faster.
I held the pistol steady at my chest and sent one round into the man coming from the front. Spinning clear of the blade chopping down behind me, I put another into the one at my back. Lead no human reflex could see, let alone dodge, punched through three skulls in an instant, and the slide locked open, racked all the way back. Every round spent.
Three of them were down. The last was not frightened by that. He charged with his sword leading, and the point was already on my gun. Hold on to it, and my arm would be knocked wide, leaving me naked to the cut—but an empty pistol was worth no more than a thing to throw. I let it go and immediately drew the dagger strapped beneath my chest, driving straight into his reach.
His sword was far longer. If a dagger was going to carry the fight, closing in was simple sense, so I stuck to him as he tried to swing the longsword and open the distance. I clenched my teeth through the pommel hammering down on my shoulder and slipped a headbutt by dropping my waist. Then I raked the dagger through the gap between his thighs as I passed. He spun with a roar thick with rage—but fighting from the blind spot favored me, the smaller of the two. While he cut at empty air, I drove the dagger into the seam of his armor.
"Gaaaaah! How can a so-called nun be this cruel—! Have you no shame before the god you serve?!"
"Ah. I don't like gods. Funny how it's always people like you who go looking for one. And this? The Pope ordered it."
I offered him that small sneer and sank a second dagger into the nape of his neck. Whatever he found so unjust, rage filled his eyes until the life went out of them.
Well. If I hadn't been holding a gun, the one dying like that might have been me. I wasn't mad for fighting, and I took no pleasure in killing people. I didn't like gods, either. And yet here I was, doing work like this because the Pope had told me to.
"Sister Selenia. You've dirtied yourself with filthy blood again. Honestly—what would you do without me."
"A Purification, if you would, Sister Lorensia. Getting splashed with blood is unpleasant."
"Oh? So blood makes you uncomfortable. But carrying out the work His Holiness the Pope assigns you—for a god you claim to hate—doesn't?"
"So you overheard. Well, they treat me well. That's why I do it."
The benefits were too good to turn the work down.
"True enough. Lord Nals is so merciful that He even generously forgives unbelievers like you, Sister Selenia. Still, what were you going to do if someone other than me had heard? There's already a line of people waiting to pick faults with a delinquent nun like you."
"No one heard, so it's fine. You may spread the rumor yourself if you like, Sister Lorensia. It's not as if my reputation has anywhere lower left to fall."
"What? Sister Selenia, you truly have no idea how you look to people! Fine—and I went out of my way to worry about you! Hurry up, recover the gun, and let's head back!"
Right. The benefits were so good they'd even stuck a nuisance like this on me and called her my partner. Come to think of it, had Lorensia always been the type to latch on like this? I didn't think so. How had things ended up this way...